Change comes dropping slow at church synod on the family

It was critic Vivien Mercier who, writing for this newspaper in February 1956, said of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot that it was “a play in which nothing happens, twice.” Were he living at this hour, and felt tempted to go to Rome, he might say something similar about the ongoing extraordinary synod of bishops.

Except “twice” would hardly be accurate, on this its eighth working day.

We on this island have moved on since 1956 and learned in the 20 years since the first IRA ceasefire of 1994 that long drawn-out meetings at which nothing happens is now called “a process”. We have also learned that it is not only on the Lake Isle of Innisfree that “peace comes dropping slow.”

It will be the same with change in the Catholic Church.

Pope Francis began this current process last October. It was followed in November with his questionnaire to Catholics worldwide, drawn together in the Instrumentum Laboris published by the Vatican last June. That is being discussed at the extraordinary synod which continues until Sunday when a document will be published. It will be discussed after a year’s reflection at the synod of bishops proper in October of next year. A document arising from that will go to Pope Francis for his perusal, reflection, and decisions.

So there’s an awful lot of nothing to happen yet. In such a way is change brought about in a large institution where irresistible force has a tradition of simply crashing against immoveable object.

And of course this ‘process’ too has, as we in Ireland had, its passionate ‘never, never, never’ men. Those such as prefect of the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy Cardinal George Pell who, in language not unfamiliar to us here, told all last week he is sticking with Jesus. He said: “Some may wish Jesus might have been a little softer on divorce, but he wasn’t. And I’m sticking with him.”

And there is Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who advised Pope Francis directly at a synod session last week there were things even he cannot change where the church’s teaching on marriage was concerned.

However, the overall mood of the synod to date has been marked by a real dialogue among the bishops in an atmosphere that has been as frank and respectful as requested by Pope Francis at its opening.

There is, as Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols said, “a very lovely spirit in the synod hall even a lightness of atmosphere which does enable people speak more from pastoral and personal experience than from academic studies.”

Then Pope Francis probably got more than he bargained for when the very first to speak at the synod were Australian couple Ron and Mavis Pirola who married 55 years ago. They described marriage as “a sexual sacrament with its fullest expression in sexual intercourse.”

They said church documents on the family were written in a language “from another planet” which was “not terribly relevant” to the real lives of people. They have Catholic friends with a gay son who welcomed their son and his partner into the family. A divorced friend of theirs felt she wasn’t fully accepted in the parish. And more. Bless their frank souls.

Pope Francis has been at all sessions of the synod apart from Wednesday morning when he gave his regular general audience in St Peter’s Square. He has listened and occasionally interjected, somewhat different to his predecessors. Last week in Rome it was recalled that Pope Benedict fell asleep during one synod and Pope St John Paul II read his breviary during another.

And what Francis is really about becomes clearer. Nothing suggests he will attempt to change church teaching. What he may do is alter practices. What he is trying to do, as US Cardinal Timothy Dolan said last week, is “recover a pastoral strategy.”

It, the Cardinal said, meant “to lead with a person. Don’t start with doctrine and rules, start with Jesus and his spouse the church.” It was about starting “with the experience. That’s the strategy of Pope Francis. Don’t lead with the chin. Don’t even lead with the mouth. Lead with the heart….” .

And that’s what this process is about too. Mercy, which “twice blest”, as it happens.

“It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.”

Patsy McGarry is Religious Affairs Correspondent